


The only one for me is you, and you for me

by Kavi Leighanna (kleighanna)



Category: Castle
Genre: F/M, Kidfic, Romance, tumblr prompt fills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-19 09:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1463827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/Kavi%20Leighanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompt fills!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked - Caskett: Alexis either just announced that she's pregnant or just delivered her first child

He’s getting old, he thinks. Really old. And nothing says it better than the tiny body cradled in his arms. He can’t breath, he can’t speak, he can only look down at her little whisper of ginger hair and thing back to the first time he’d done this. 

Too many years ago and long before too many things had changed. He’d been young and optimistic then, probably more than a bit stupid. Now though, he has the smartest wife in the world, he has a son who looks up to him and now this, this tiny little bundle who will also rely on him. 

"Dad."

Rick turns, finds his daughter watching him with soft eyes. She’s so tired, exhausted from pushing this little one out, but she is so very, very beautiful. Just as beautiful as she’d been when it had been her in his arms and not her daughter. 

"Pumpkin," he says, and he knows it’s all in his voice. "I’m so proud of you."

She offers him a smile. “Where’s Kate?” 

"She and Mike went down to the cafeteria. He looked a little white."

Alexis laughs. “He’ll be so good, Dad.”

"Well. Just don’t forget about Pops."

She reaches out and he shifts his granddaughter until he can take his daughter’s hand.

"Never."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CROSSOVER FICLET - CRIMINAL MINDS
> 
> Anonymous asked  
> I know you've done this before, but I'd love to see a meeting between Hotchniss and Caskett.

"They’re totally doing it."

Kate almost slams on the brakes as she looks over at him. There’s a warning in her eyes he does not heed. 

"Agents Hotchner and Prentiss. They’re totally doing it."

"Castle."

"What? Just watch them. They’re like us."

She winces. “Rick-“

"She loves him," Castle goes on, into the story now. "She’s not as good at hiding it. Which is funny, because I bet he fell first. Tall, dark and stoic. I bet there was a case and she got hurt, and he just knew."

"Since when do you write romance novels?"

He shrugs. “Nikki and Rook seem to be pretty happy.”

Kate blushes. 

"You know, they should have as ship name. Like Esplanie. Or Caskett."

"You have been spending too much time on the internet again, haven’t you?”

"You’ve been swamped."

"And you’ve been procrastinating."

He will not acknowledge that, he decides. So what if he is? Nikki just isn’t speaking to him right now. He thinks it has something to do with tying her up and letting Rook rescue her. She’s not usually the damsel in distress and he’d kind of liked the role reversal. Except now he can’t write a damn thing. 

But this… He thinks maybe this’ll give him something new. 

Two agents in love. Throw in some fraternization and a broken past here or there and maybe he really can get something new out of it. Actually, that Agent Prentiss looks like she has some absolutely awesome skeletons in her closet. 

"Maybe Hotly," he says, musing now as Kate navigates traffic. "No, too close to a real word. Aairly? No, too lame. Oh! Got it! Hotchniss! Esplanie, Caskett and Hotchniss."

Kate rolls her eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hellofashot-castle asked  
> ”You’re too good at this.” Caskett

"You’re too good at this."

Kate laughs from behind his bookshelves. “I’ve had a lot of practice, Castle.” 

Free evenings are rare, and evenings when Kate’s in a playful mood even more so. She’s gotten bogged down with the wedding - which twists him up because he always expected ninety percent of that special day would be his to plan - and work, and life. 

So, he’d done what any good Castle does. 

And pulled out the laser tag gear. 

She’s beat him three times, soundly. Even knowing the layout of his apartment, the actual range of his equipment and all of the secret hiding spots, she’s managed to best him three times. Not that he’s surprised, necessarily, but it is a bit disappointing. Cop or no cop, this is supposed to be his game. 

She comes around the shelves, her gun at her side and he drops his with a sigh. She laughs, just a little, her smile soft. Her Kate smile. He adores her Kate smile. It’s not nearly as predatory as her Beckett smile and it usually means good things for him. And sure enough, she steps close and cups his head in her hands. He feels her brush tiny kisses over his forehead. 

"Poor baby," she murmurs into his cheek. "Bested in pretend cops and robbers, by a real life detective."

He growls and scoops her up, revelling in the real, bright laughter she emits. He can’t help it. The real life detective is going to marry him, and sometimes it just hits him like a ton of bricks. This can’t be much of a game to her, has to be too much like work, but she’d donned the vest because she knows it’s how he plays. 

But she plays a bit differently and gets her legs around his hips. It’s a bit awkward with the vests but she manages to line them up just right. “Think you can best me here too, Castle?”

He takes her mouth, rough, urgent, a battle not unlike the one they’d just finished. He gets his hands under her shirt, on her skin and grins at the way her body hitches. 

Game on.


	4. Kate & Alexis pregnant at the same time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3 perspectives prompt: Kate and Alexis pregnant at the same time.

**Alexis.**

Sometimes, Alexis forgets Kate’s amazing taste in independent New York shops. The tea shoppe is no different, warm and colourful and welcoming. Everything her pregnant self most definitely needs. She’s definitely regretting moving across the city now. She knows this is the kind of place she could frequent every day. 

From the young man currently talking softly with her stepmother, Alexis thinks maybe this is already Kate’s. 

"Alexis, hi," Kate greets, standing easily to pull Alexis into a hug. 

The redhead groans as they pull back, carefully avoiding the awkward baby bump knocking that’s making it difficult for her to hug anyone, let alone her also-pregnant stepmother. 

Simultaneous pregnancies. Amazing and totally surreal. Her dad’s been insufferable.

"I hate you," Alexis says lightly as she slips her coat off her shoulders. "I feel like a beached whale."

And Kate most certainly doesn’t look it. She looks serene and calm, like she isn’t going to give birth any day now. 

Kate laughs, warm and low as she slips her hand over her stomach. “That doesn’t bode well for the third trimester.”

.

**Kate.**

Kate watches the exasperation on her stepdaughter’s face with no small amount of amusement. Alexis is excited, Kate knows, even if the young woman has had a bit of a rough go of it. Where Kate had barely suffered from morning sickness, Alexis had spent too many early mornings in the bathroom. Where her little Beckett-Castle has slept through the night, Alexis has stories upon stories of the acrobatics her baby performs just as she’s settling down. 

Sometimes, Kate wonders how this had become her life. What amazing thing had she done to end up with not only Rick, but Alexis and this new little one. A man and a family who are so incredibly understanding of the work she does, the drive inside her, everything. 

"Have you started desk duty?" 

Kate hates the shiver of absolute revulsion that spills down her spine. She’s two months from giving birth for God’s sake, perfectly safe to question witnesses, do interrogations… “Yes.”

Alexis chuckles as she folds her scarf. Beached whale her ass. Alexis looks just radiant and so, so happy. 

Sometimes it hits her like a tonne of bricks. Sometimes she feels like she shouldn’t have this, this happiness and glee and glow that comes with being folded into the Castle clan. But then there are moments like these where Alexis launches into a by-play of the latest soccer playing antics that go on in her womb where Kate also doesn’t care what she’s done, how she got here, she’s just damn glad to have it. 

.

**Unknown.**

He likes Detective Beckett. He likes her a lot. She’s quiet, reserved, but so incredibly competent and real and-

He needs to stop waxing poetic. 

It’s not his fault, he thinks. She’s the reason he even has this job in the first place. He’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the web of the Twelfth precinct. But then she’d walked into the interrogation room, had a three minute conversation and huffed. 

 _Do something good with your life,_  he remembers her saying, disapproval in her gaze. It had stung worse than his mother’s palm across his cheek before his father had picked him up and walked out on her. 

He doesn’t know what happened in between meeting the detective and showing up at her desk again, awkwardly asking for help. She hadn’t turned him away. She’d given him her card and he’d written down his dad’s landline and now, well. Now he works in a tea shoppe. 

He owes Detective Beckett. 

But more than that, he thinks a woman like Detective Beckett deserves a whole hell of a lot. Like a husband who dotes on her - they’ve both been in here - and supportive friends - the ME is terrifying but also hilarious - and now this, obviously family, a woman that makes pride flare in the detective’s eyes. He finds himself hoping upon hope that things work out for them, continue to work out for her, because sometimes he sees a strange sadness in her eyes that he hates. 

In the meantime, though, he figures he can make his own contribution to her happiness. 

He smiles as he steps over. “Detective, ma’am. What can I get you?”


	5. Talking about having kids

It takes her a couple of weeks to come out with it. He’s not surprised. As much as it drives him insane, Kate likes time to think and process. He likes to think he’s learned to be patient. 

And yet.

He thinks maybe it’s the subject, that if Doyle hadn’t mentioned a bloody thing about their “three kids” he would have been able to let it go. It’s not like he and Kate haven’t danced around the subject, even thrown out little “when we have kids” comments. But that’s them, him and Kate. To have someone else say it, someone else who talks about _senator_ and  _real literature_  and says things about the two of them that are close and private well. 

It feels painfully obvious that this is bothering her more than she’d like to admit. He’s seen it, when there are kids involved in cases, when they’re walking down the street and she catches sight of a park, of kids playing. He sees the minute changes in her face - because he  _knows_  and he’s looking because God, this is Kate and when is he not watching? 

Okay, ‘bothering’ is telling himself a story. He has no idea what’s going around in Kate’s head. Had she thought about three? Or is this the idea that it makes it real to have someone else say it? 

"Rick."

He blinks himself out of his thoughts, realizes he’s been staring at his fingers on the keyboard for too long. It’s Kate in the door, worry in her eyes. 

"You’re home." 

She smiles, but there’s something brittle around the edges. “You’re a million miles away.” 

It’s an opening. An opening she so rarely gives him. Still, he looks back at his hands on the keyboard for a minute, considers. “Is it that Doyle said we’d have three, or just kids in general?” 

Nothing follows for a moment. It is absolute and complete silence beyond the gentle hum of his laptop. When he looks up she has the look on her face that says she’s trying to consider her words carefully, trying not to hurt his feelings. His chest tightens. 

"Hey no. Castle, stop."

He’s trying. He is. He’s been trying because he knows that the first thing Kate says is so rarely what she means. He’s the wordsmith, the one who is supposed to have the right words every time. It takes her longer. 

She comes around the desk, a couple of quick, fluid movements that dislodge his hands on the computer. They fall to her hips as she leans against the desk but he can’t look at her, only the way her shirt wrinkles just above her belt. 

"I swore to myself I wouldn’t have kids after I became a cop."

That stabs, even though he’s sure he knows it’s not true. It can’t be true. She’s not that cruel. 

"I never saw them with Sorenson - we were both in law enforcement - and-"

"I get it."

She hums, a sound he knows means she is a little irritated for the interruption. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to hear about the others. 

"Rick, being with you… It’s the first time I’ve thought I could do it." 

His head comes up then, surprised and defensive on her behalf. There’s never been a doubt to him, of course. He’s seen her with Alexis, can’t help but think of Kate raising her own little girl with the same fierce and stubborn heart. Never in a million years would he have thought Kate’s reluctance to have kids would have anything to do with her competency at it. 

"I don’t have a role model for it," she admits quietly, combs her fingers through his hair. "I don’t know what to do when a baby screams and cries, what to do with an unruly teenager. And Castle, what happens if my kid turns out like  me? What happens when I can’t give them what they need?" 

"Kate," he says, tips his head forward to it rests on her abdomen. "Kate, that’s insane."

"Hey."

He laughs in an awkward kind of relief, fingers tightening on her hips. “I’ve never doubted you.”

He hears the heavy breath she releases, feels the way her stomach contracts beneath his forehead. 

"I never… Kate, there’s nothing you can’t do."

She huffs. “A kid is not a case. And Castle, I screwed this up so bad in the beginning. You and me. But we’re adults and we get over it, but a kid-“

"You- Wait. You what?"

She looks at him, startled. “I screwed this up. I almost died and that’s what-“

"God, Kate. Love. No."

She blinks at him. 

"You…" He shakes his head, unable to explain the faith he’s always had in her, the reason he’s pushed her, the hope he’s always held in a dark corner of his heart. "I don’t resent you for waiting." 

And he doesn’t. He doesn’t regret or resent a damn step it took to get them here. Not with her. Not with Kate. Never with Kate.

She tugs at his ear. “If you’re going to start preaching about fate again-“

He laughs. “No. Not fate.”

"But."

"But I wouldn’t write it any other way. You know that." He swallows. "And Kate, when we have kids, if we have kids-"

"When, Rick."

His heart leaps at the confidence in her voice, the certainty. “You’re going to be an amazing mother. You already are.”

It takes a moment before the confusion clears, but he can see the awe lurking in the corner of her gaze, the wonderful acceptance that he looks at her as a maternal figure for Alexis. That he thinks Alexis looks at her that way. 

"Together," she says, cupping his cheek and rubbing her thumb under his eye. "Together or not at all, Castle. Partners."

He takes her hand, kisses her knuckle just below her engagement ring. “Partners.”

The  _always_  goes unsaid.


	6. Slow dancing

Lanie and Esposito’s wedding is very different from Jenny and Ryan’s, and most definitely different from their own. Everything is loud and boisterous, huge families and multiple languages and even though Castle genuinely likes people, he finds the whole affair genuinely exhausting. 

Or maybe that’s just because he feels like he hasn’t seen his wife all evening.

He’d expected that to be the case, from the moment he’d heard Kate and Lanie squeal at a crime scene - a  _crime scene_ , the two most professional women he knew. He’s not sure if Kate takes her maid of honour role seriously to make up for the fact that Lanie hadn’t been able to hold the same position at their wedding or if Kate just… takes it seriously. 

Regardless, even as a groomsman - who had graciously relinquished the role of best man to Ryan, thanks - he feels like he hasn’t had a damn second with Kate. 

"Hey you."

He looks up, blinks away the vague fog of disappointment and a loneliness that is both stupid and irrational and offers her his best grin. “Hi.”

Kate chuckles quietly, lets him pull her down into his lap. She’s been affectionate when they’ve managed to steal a split second, tactile in a way she often isn’t. But it hasn’t been enough for him. The celebration around them, the obvious way Lanie and Esposito stare at each other and God, if every time those damn glasses clinked he didn’t want to pull Kate up and into his arms. 

"It’s a wedding, Castle. Smile."

He sighs, tugs her tighter. “I’ve missed you.”

She laughs and it sounds a little indulgent. “I’m right here.”

He catches her mouth with his, hears the way the rough hip-hop beat smooths and softens. He feels her smile just before he pulls away. 

"May I have this dance?"

Her smile is so wide, so bright, so beautiful. “Always.”

So he takes his wife by the hand and leads her to the huge dance floor. And for the next three minutes there is no one else in the world. There’s just the two of them, wrapped up in each other and the music, where everything is and always will be just right. 


	7. I’ve seen you look at me when you think I don’t notice.

Sometimes it just kind of sneaks up on her, fast, hard and entirely unexpected. Sometimes, she just glances up, eyes drifting and catching automatically on his broad form. 

Hers. 

He’s entirely hers.

It’s still terrifyingly surreal sometimes. God, they’re married and she still thinks she’s going to wake up to discover this whole life has been a dream. She’s irrationally terrified of falling into an alternate universe - she’s going to _kill_  him for putting that in her head - only to find that he hasn’t tumbled through the rabbit hole with her. That once again, she’ll be abandoned and alone.

But then he looks up and catches her eyes, gives her this look, like after all this time she should know better than to think he wouldn’t catch her staring. He extracts himself from his conversation with a skill she envies, coming towards her with a sparkle in his eye.

“Stop that,” he says, voice low and teasing. “You’re watching me and it’s creepy.”

She laughs, the irony not lost on her. How many hours had he spent staring at her? How long does he still do it, despite the fact that she catches him more often than not? 

“Everything okay?” he murmurs into her hair, lips against her temple. 

“Yeah,” she answers softly, leaning into him. It’s so natural now, so easy. Her head tilts back and he accepts her invitation, pressing his mouth to hers. She hums into the kiss, slow and languid like they have all the time in the world. Maybe they do.

“Love you.” 

He chuckles, kisses her cheek. “Sappy Beckett. Adorable.”

She lashes out, catches him with a backhand to the stomach. He winces dramatically and Kate smirks. Then he’s kissing her again, this one deep and delicious. 

He breaks away with a smile that does way more than simply reach his eyes. “Love you, too.”


	8. Wait a minute. Are you jealous?

“Are you avoiding me?”

Castle startles, faces her. “What? No!”

Kate slides onto one of the island stools, smooth as can be. She will not show how nervous she is, how on edge. 

She’s been trying. It’s been… complicated with Alexis having just moved home, and breaking up with Pi, added to the fact that Kate is the absolute last person that is going to try and get between father-daughter bonding time… 

Complicated. 

Because in the midst of all that, while father and daughter try their utmost to make it up to one another, Kate’s been kind of lost in the chaos. She’s not trying to place blame (what’s the point when there’s none to place) and there’s no one at fault, she just misses her man. 

“I see you every day.”

She hates how defensive he is, the idea that there are enough people (women) in his life that have conditioned him that way. She’s always prided herself on  _not_  being one of those women, but seriously. She is not in the mood for him to play dense. 

She drops her chin into her hand, elbow braced on the marble. “Rick.”

She sees him deflate and hates herself, just a little bit. She just wants to spend some time with him. Together. Like a couple. 

“I miss you,” she murmurs, aware of how the tone and the words get to him. “I love having you at the precinct with me, but that’s not…”

“Us.” 

She sees the dawning realization in his eyes as he puts the timeline together, how far he has to go back to find the last time they did more than basically tumble into bed, separately or together. 

His eyes clear a moment later, a little too gleeful for her to feel comfortable. 

“Wait a minute. Are you jealous?”

She rears back despite herself, a little bit offended, yes. “What? Jealous of what? Of who?”

“No, no,” he says, immediately placating (because no, there are no other significant women in his life and she knows that, trusts that and believes that). “Alexis.”

“You’re asking me if I’m jealous of your daughter?”

She knows ever ounce of incredulity is in those words, because she is  _not_. It’s just… not. She was jealous of Gina, of Jordan just a little, but his daughter?

She sighs. “Castle. I want to spend time with you. Just us. Where you and Alexis aren’t trying to make it all up to each other and make up for lost time and just have  _us_. Is that so much to ask?”

He’s around the counter in the next instant, hands on her hips to turn her into his body. “Of course not,’ he says easily, aware now that she means it. “Kate, of course not. What do you want to do?”

She leans her head on his shoulder. “I don’t know,” she admits. “This is as far as I got.”

He chuckles, but threads his big hand through her hair in the way she has sorely missed and she relaxes even further into him. God, she doesn’t care what they do, she just wants to spend time with him. 

“Well why don’t we-”

Her phone rings. Of course it does, and she groans into his shoulder. 

“It’s Esposito,” Castle says, having tugged her phone across the island. 

“Of course it is.”

There’s a case, there always is and she hangs up with a sigh. It’s the first time in a long time she hasn’t wanted to go to work. 

“Hey.”

She looks up at him, seriously considers telling Esposito to just handle it with Ryan until she can curl up with this man for an hour. 

“After. You and me.”

“Yes,” she says with relish. 

He cups her cheek and kisses her, slow and deep and good God she has _missed_ him. 

“Let’s go catch a killer.”


	9. You did all this for me?

“Keep them closed.”

“They’re closed,” Kate replies on a laugh, biting her tongue against the snarky reference she wants to make for the way his hands cover her eyes. And yet, she’s nervous. Anxious. 

It’s her birthday. Her first birthday since their wedding and she knows how much the Castles like birthdays. She’s been on edge for weeks about the whole thing. 

“Ready?” he asks behind her, breath against her ears. 

She chuckles. “Are you?” 

She feels his lips briefly against the juncture of her neck and shoulder. “Go ahead.”

She feels him step away as her eyes open and it is absolutely nothing like she’d anticipated. She’d expected half of the Twelfth, a giant spread, a massive birthday cake. Instead, there are two cupcakes and two take out cups on the island, unlit candles standing tall and waiting in heaps of chocolate icing. 

“Rick?”

His palm comes to rest against her hip and she feels the strength of his arm across her back as he stands beside her. “I know we can be… overwhelming. And Alexis still wants to have dinner with Mother and she’s been talking about Lanie and the guys coming but-”

She turns, grips his t-shirt. “You did all this for me?”

He ghosts his mouth over her forehead. “Of course.”

“No big party, no huge surprise, no insane crowds-”

He smiles, strokes her arm. “Sometimes I forget you’re not used to family like I am.”

He’s right. For the longest time, Lanie was the only member of the NYPD that knew when her birthday was. For a long time, Lanie had been the only person Kate even wanted to think about celebrating with, a quiet night of take out and wine. Now she has lunch with her father, the boys leave cards on her desk and even Captain Gates had offered her a quiet ‘happy birthday’ this morning. Nothing big. Nothing over the top. 

Nothing fitting of a Castle. 

She tilts her face up, the anxiety bleeding out of her as she pushes up on her tip toes to lean into the kiss. “Thank you.”

His hand comes up, loops around the back of her neck to hold her there. She’s grinning when she pulls away and he mirrors it. 

“Come on. Cupcakes won’t eat themselves. And we have a long night of marathoning ahead of us. I figured your birthday was the perfect time to initiate you into Firefly and I know you’re still far from caught up on Doctor Who…”

She tucks her hair behind her ear as she follows him to the counter, watches him light the candles as he goes on and on. She slips around the counter, presses herself to his side and tugs his face down for another kiss. 

His smile is so soft, and utterly beautiful. “Happy birthday, Kate.”

Happy birthday, indeed.


	10. Please. Don’t leave.

This time it’s bad. It’s really, really bad. 

It’s been rocky since he’s come home, since he reappeared in their lives, alive and whole and healthy. At first, she knows, it had been about the wedding, about feeling abandoned at the altar and everything that had come with the pain and fear and grief of losing him. 

But now, she has no idea what’s going on. 

She feels like she’s fighting a one-sided battle, feels like she’s climbing up hill with him every day despite waking up beside him, despite the wedding set on her finger. But in all of her imaginings, good and bad, the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘maybes’ that held them back as much as they’ve brought them to this point, this is not the way she’s ever considered this going. 

She feels shredded, raw, like she’s being scraped across gravel and honestly, it’s not even like it’s a fight they’ve never had before. She works too much, he fades into his own world too often, he’s not writing, she’s not sleeping, neither of them can remember the last time they really spent quality time together…

This is the culmination of all of that. Yelling accusations, tearful confessions, anger and hurt and everything they’ve worked so hard not to put each other through. 

She needs to get out. Not forever, it’s not her style but she needs to… do something. Take a walk, hit a punching bag, put a few bullets through a dummy, she’s not wholly sure and she doesn’t wholly care. She just… needs to not be here right now. 

She’s reaching for the handle when she hears him. 

“Kate, please. Please don’t leave.”

She whirls, ready to give him another tongue lashing because  _God_. And then she gets a look at his face, at the devastation there, and a whole other kind of anger rises up in her. 

“Richard Castle, do you think I’m  _done_?”

He blinks at her, unsure and surprised, but the devastation is still there, lurking behind it all. The honest thought that she could walk away from this, from him. Not for a minute, not for a couple of hours, but forever. 

She doesn’t realize she’s stalked back to him until she’s poking him in the chest. “Do you think I would voluntarily put myself through everything we’ve fought through just to walk away  _now_?”

“I wouldn’t blame you.”

The sound she releases is a strange mixture of desperate and angry. She punches his shoulder, unsure of what else to do. “Sometimes you are so stupid!”

He takes it in stride, takes her in stride and somewhere along the way she realizes she’s started crying, realizes he has too. They’ve collapsed to the floor in a heap, both of them white-knuckled in their grip on each other. Eventually she catches her breath and his cheeks in her palms. 

“I’m not leaving. Not for good. God, Rick I just-”

“Need to get out.” She can tell by the way his shoulders shift that he does get it, does get her - he always has; it took her too long to realize it - but it’s not settled. 

The outpouring of emotion, the salt drying on her face, it’s enough to settle her for now, to keep her from lashing out at him again. So she breathes. It’s not perfect and she can still feel the itch to get out, to shoot something, to hit something, to work herself to exhaustion. 

“Let’s go to the Hamptons,” he says suddenly, his hand desperate on her hips as they slide up her back. “We’ll take a long weekend and-”

“Talk,” she says quietly. 

Reestablish where they are, where they’re going. She’s sure of him, in a lot of the important ways, but she feels like she’s drowning and there’s no way to swim up. 

“Talk,” he agrees, but there’s a real settled note in his voice right now, the desperation gone in the face of her quick agreement. Like he’d doubted the fact that she wants to -  _needs to_  - work this out with him. “Can you get the days?” 

She buries her head in his shoulder, in his neck. “I’ll see what I can do.”

His hand comes up and cups the back of her neck, protective, possessive and her shoulders sag just a little further. “I love you, Kate. I love you.”

She looks up at him, everything in his face and swallows. “I love you, too.”

And God, she just hopes it’s enough. 


	11. I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.

His ex-wife. Of all the people, and all the places, it’s his ex-wife going to the Hamptons with him the same day she’d broken up with Tom for him. 

Not that he knows that, of course, but it definitely doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“Hey.”

She smiles at Lanie, doesn’t bother to hide the emotion still swimming in her. 

And Lanie, bless her, doesn’t reach out. She releases a disgruntled noise, yes, glares at where Castle and Gina had disappeared, but she doesn’t make a big deal. Kate’s glad for it. She can feel the eyes on her from the conference room. 

“His loss.”

“Yeah.”

It doesn’t feel like it right now, she thinks. It feels like everything she’d hoped for is more than just crumbling around her ears. 

“Kate.”

It’s all Lanie needs to say. Kate hears everything the ME holds back.  _I’m here_  and  _you deserve better_  and Kate will never be able to explain how much her support and loyalty feels. 

“Come on. Don’t let him ruin this celebration.”

Montgomery, Esposito and Ryan aren’t doing the greatest job of pretending like they weren’t avidly watching everything with Lanie. 

“I’m coming.”

So Lanie turns back, gives Kate a moment to compose herself. Kate sighs as she takes one last look back over her shoulder, at the elevator doors that have long-closed behind him. Behind them. 

“I think I’m in love with you,” she whispers to the mostly empty bullpen. “And I’m terrified.”

But as she steps back into that conference room, faces the understanding and a healthy dose of pity, she puts a smile on her face. He may have just broken her heart - unwittingly or not - but she will not let it colour this part of her life. 

And tonight, she’ll go home and deal with it, grieve for what could have been in the privacy of the dark and her apartment. Then she’ll do what she always does and start anew. 


	12. I got you a present.

“I got you a present.”

Castle looks up from his laptop to find his wife in the doorway. Fresh from work Kate is one of his favourites - yes, okay, all of the Kates he sees are his favourites - but it’s the little bag she holds that catches his attention. It’s no secret he likes presents. 

“It’s not even my birthday.”

She laughs, but he catches the note of nervousness in it, like she’s worried he won’t like whatever she has in that bag. Or maybe it’s not his reaction she’s worried about. So he doesn’t let her stand separate as she goes to hand over the bag. Instead he grasps her wrist, pulls her with it, makes sure he can feel her against his shoulder. 

The pale green paper goes first, the box he pulls out wrapped in the same. She laughs at him as he rips at the paper but goes utterly still when he finally figures out what he holds in his hands. 

Oh. 

Oh wow. 

“Kate?” he whispers, looks up at her, at the hope and the fear and the utter faith in his eyes. 

“I still have to go to the doctor,” she admits softly, runs her fingers absently through his hair. His hand comes up to grasp hers as he places a kiss in the middle of her palm, the boxed pregnancy test held tight in the hand in his lap. 

“This is why you threw out the bacon last week.”

She hums on a laugh. “And the tea this week.”

He grunts. He’d noticed, but she’d also been changing her diet and he’d just figured that was part of it. He’d learned long ago that a woman’s diet really isn’t something up for general discussion. 

His arm wraps around her, his eyes drawn to her stomach despite himself, his forehead coming to rest just above where their baby should be growing. “A baby.”

Her eyes light up as he says it, so very different from the nerves he’d seen in her eyes to start with. “Yeah.”

She sounds reverent and he finds himself tugging her into his lap, tilting her head so he can take her mouth. “You’re going to be an amazing mom.”

She blushes, strokes his hair around his ear. “You think so?” 

“Oh Kate,” he says, kissing her again, thorough and deep. “I know so.”


End file.
